In Short: Gadge
by lostinthememories
Summary: Gadge oneshots/twoshots/threeshots, anything I don't think needs its own individual story. Will be updated as I write more. No smut. Enjoy!
1. Badminton

_First of my oneshot collection! Inspired by a horrible day in gym class (which may or may not have been today) where I lost all my self-confidence over a game of badminton. Enjoy (while you wait for the next chapter of FTFNP)!_

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"I can't do this, I can't do this," the blonde's voice is high as she laughs at herself. It's been a few minutes now and she still hasn't managed to get the birdie over the net. It either falls off of the racket, jumps limply into the air, or stays (somehow) in her hand. Gale's friends roll their eyes (actually saying anything to her gets them a harsh look from Mr. Underwood) but he can't help but watch her with an odd fascination.

She's small and pale; that much is obvious. Her face is red, and her smile is becoming much more forced and pained. Gale notices how her hair shines in the overhead lights; it isn't exactly blonde, like Delly's or that kid Mellark's, but it's more of a gold. Like the sunset.

Her name is Madge. One of the richest girls in school, but she never acts like it. The only people that don't like her are jealous, gullible or holding some sixth-grade grudge. Gale only sees her in this class, as it is the only one that mixes all four grades at the high school. It's only been a couple weeks since he started his senior year, and it is today that he really starts noticing the frustrated girl across the court from him.

After a few more failed attempts, she stops trying to laugh at herself. It's clear that her discoordination is starting to make her self-conscious. Her partner, a tall, dark-haired girl, looks at her sympathetically and says, "I'll serve."

She smiles slightly and bites her nails as she watches the birdie fly perfectly over the net. Thom dashes for it and just barely hits it back. He grins, looking proud of himself, and Gale rolls his eyes but can't help but smile a little too;_ is Madge looking at him?_ If so, her eyes quickly dart in the opposite direction.

Gale watches in amusement as she suddenly realizes the birdie is flying towards her; his smirk turns into a gape as she hits it with smooth ease, as if she hadn't been miserably failing the last twenty minutes. It sails right towards him, and he hits it back just in time, right into the net. She holds back a smile as she coolly strides below the net to reach it. "Your serve," Thom shouts, and Gale sees him wink at Madge. He clenches his jaw without really knowing it.

"God help me," she muses, and Thom and the girl next to Madge both laugh a little. It only takes about seven tries before she makes a clean shot. Gale knows she must think that they've gotten impatient with her, and in all honesty, the three people around her are probably the only ones in the class who _wouldn't_ make a rude remark or roll their eyes or sigh dramatically. Perhaps Mr. Underwood put them together for that reason.

The game continues slowly, and Gale glances at the clock several times in only a few minutes. Next time it's Madge's serve, he calls gently, "Try holding the racket at an angle." Instantly, he regrets it. She looks at him as though she's wounded; her face flushes a deeper shade of red. But she does what he says (without looking at him) and the serve just barely hits the tip of Gale's racket.

Finding himself blushing, Madge seems to play with a new vigor. She's not quite _better,_ but she's becoming a little less_ terrible._

Thom notices his friend's movements become less sharp and balanced and smirks to himself. _Gale? Getting flustered with this little Undersee girl?_ Sure, she's pretty, but she's not Gale's type. Or so he thinks.

Just as Gale raises his racket to hit the birdie, Thom "accidentally" nudges him, causing it to fly crookedly over the service line. Gale shoots him a frown and Thom can't help but laugh out loud. Tossing it back, Madge shouts, her voice shaking a little, "Try holding the racket at an angle."

Thom and the girl on Madge's team burst out in real laughter this time, and a real smile breaks out on Madge's face. He feels his cheeks grow warmer and looks down at the ground; when he looks up, Madge's smile is gone from her lips but still playing at her eyes.

* * *

"Sorry about them," Gale mutters as he and Madge take down one of the nets. "Thom doesn't know when to shut the hell up."

Madge laughs. "If it helps you any, that's the first time I've ever laughed at someone else besides myself in this class."

"Uhm," Gale clears his throat, "you're not bad, really." It's a lie, she _is_ bad, but Gale says it anyway.

She laughs louder again, and Gale's heart stutters. "I hit it, like, six times," she shakes her head, attempting to tie a knot around the two poles and the net bunched in between them. "Dammit," she curses under her breath. "I can't tie knots, either."

"Here," he breathes, gently prying her hands from the knot. He pretends not to hear the soft gasp that escapes her lips. His fingers nimbly work the material into a tight knot, and she smiles again. "I don't know how they're going to untie that one," she smiles.

He laughs. "But really," he tries again, rubbing the back of his neck. "You're not too bad."

"Yeah," she nods, raising her eyebrows, "It only took me about a hundred times that one serve."

"Seven," his voice is small. He _feels_ small. Gale realizes with some embarrassment that he has never felt so insignificant in front of a girl. It's not because she's off-putting or intimidating, but he can't put his finger on it. Just the way she glows, he decides. The way she laughs and smiles and crumbles before him without missing a beat.

"Hm?" she raises her eyebrows.

"Seven times, you hit it," he stutters, a little louder, feeling silly now. Why would he even count? But she laughs again. "I was off a little, I suppose," she says softly.

"Yeah," he chuckles nervously.

"I'm only really good at music," she shrugs. "Piano. I like writing songs and things like that. I'm not good at much else."

"I'm sure there's more," he tells her, imagining her long, slender fingers moving across the ivory keys of a piano - one his family could never afford. The piano in his thoughts fades, and suddenly he imagines the same fingers traveling down his jaw, her full, pink lips meeting his own...

"Not really," she shakes her head, not a drop of self-pity in her voice. "But there's no room for skills like that here."

"What do you mean?" Gale finds himself wondering.

"I have to be someone," she says. "It's high school. I can't be 'the girl who's good at piano,' so instead I have to be 'the girl who sucks at sports.'"

It bothers him how right she is. In a sense. Madge is going to be labeled as something; so is he. And there's nothing either one of them can do about it. But Gale wishes he could watch her be herself, not the red-faced girl in gym shorts that are far too big for her. "Anyway," she clears her throat. "The bell's going to ring soon. See you, Gale."

"Yeah," he rasps, "see you."

She smiles over her shoulder before walking out of the storage closet. And Gale feels so dizzy and overcome with some sort of feeling that he just stands there, wanting to figure it out but being unable to. He stands there for a long time, not hearing the bell go off, until Mr. Underwood lectures him sternly. Then he realizes he's not out of his gym clothes yet and the passing period is seconds away from ending.

"I'm not giving you a pass, Hawthorne," the teacher snaps. "Explain it to your teacher yourself."

"Yes sir," Gale nearly whispers as he opens the door to the locker room. _Damn you, Undersee,_ he thinks, shaking his head. _You're going to be the death of me._

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_Thoughts? Reviews appreciated! xoxo_


	2. Valentine's Day

**Disclaimer: Sorry this is a little late. I have lost a lot of sleep over the week and so I slept about 15 hours since yesterday afternoon. But I hope you still enjoy it!**

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Madge always hated Valentine's Day.

It's not because she was a cynic, or because she didn't believe in love, or because she didn't like the idea, but more because she had no one to share it with. She was always the girl with her nose in a book, her cornsilk curls tucked behind her ears, the left side of her lower lip always torn from the way she chewed it when she was anxious. It wasn't that Madge wasn't pretty or stylish; she had well enough potential to be one of the most popular girls in school. It was simply because she hadn't the time or the will for the catty monarchy that ruled Seamtown High.

She sat in her desk, slumping, her legs stretched out, her aqua-colored Keds firm against the back of the empty desk in front of her. She's always the first one in her homeroom; it's not like she fits into any of the before-school shenanigans that go on. There's the jocks, guys and girls, who spend all their time in the locker rooms and gym (running for fun - something Madge never made sense of). There's the preps, who huddle at one big table at the far end of the cafeteria doing their nails, curling their hair (unplugging the cafeteria microwave to plug in their irons), reading magazines and of course, gossiping. There were the "geeks" and "nerds," with an obvious difference that Madge could never identify, sitting at two tables whispering hushed insults to each other across the room. The geeks traded cards of some fantasy game and doodled some sort of secret code onto the notebooks of one another. The nerds studied, made a game out of quizzing each other, generally looking down at all below them. Such as the troublemakers, the kids with their hoods up and heads down, causing general inconveniences and mild acts of vandalism. They were never fully present at first period, always finishing up recieving a lecture in the office when the first bell rang.

Madge wasn't any of these, and she'd hoped she would never acquiesce to any of them. She liked to think of herself as a simple girl. A girl who took black-and-white photos, drank tea, wore the same pair of shoes until they wore out, and enjoyed making her parents proud. It wasn't that she was a bore, either. She had a sharp wit and found some things funny that others would either roll their eyes or grimace at, and she - as much as she hated to admit it - laughed pretty hard at jokes that required a knowledge of history or physics. A stupid pun never failed to undo her, but of course, she was rarely ever told them.

But Gale Hawthorne was definitely well-fit into one of the incredibly defined groups of STH. He was a troublemaker.

All of the girls who had little respect for themselves and their emotional health went after him. Rumors of his sexual prowess did not escape Madge's ears, but instead of making her blush or giggle (like everyone else), she rolled her eyes. She'd like to think that she was eternally annoyed with Gale, although, being as quiet as she was, she'd never voiced this to him. She likes to think it's because she'd never given him the chance to approach her, but it was this Monday, Valentine's Day, that he'd given himself the chance.

"Madge, right?" his voice is smooth as he drops himself into the desk she had been pushing her feet against. She looks up at him suspiciously. "Why so quiet?" he smirks, putting a stick of gum into his mouth as he raises an eyebrow.

"Nothing to say," she murmurs matter-of-factly, turning the page of her book to accentuate her point. Gale cranes his neck to see the title. "'Paper Towns,' huh?"

"Mm," Madge nods vaguely, her eyes moving rapidly over the words, although she somehow can't exactly concentrate on them.

"I read a little bit of that," Gale shrugs, and to this Madge raises an eyebrow. Gale doesn't even read the labels on his textbooks, let alone a few pages of anything that he'd actually have to enter the library at will to lay his hands on. "A lot of swearing. Sexual innuendo."

"Like that bothers you," she raises her head to him, now rolling her eyes. Still, she finds the words tumbling out of her mouth. "Since when do you read, Gale?"

The gum cracks in his mouth as he shrugs, his eyes darting away from her. "This one hot chick I used to like said it was her favorite. I'd figure if we had something to talk about, I could get in her pants sooner." He laughs as he sees Madge's dismayed - perhaps horrified - face, and he chuckles loudly. "Kidding."

"Hilarious," she mutters, the sarcasm nearly visible in her voice. "Now can I help you?"

"Well, things with her didn't really work out," he sighs, swinging his legs up onto the desk in the row beside him. She found her eyes tracing the defined line they create, the dark jeans obscuring nothing and everything at the same time. She quickly looks away upon the realization. "My friends started calling her Foxface. Said she was ugly as shit."

"That's nice." Madge is becoming more agitated, nearly asking him to leave when he speaks again. "She wasn't, really. Wouldn't have sex with me, but I broke up with her for more complicated reasons."

"Because you are such a complicated person," Madge quips.

"Exactly," Gale grins. "So it's Valentine's Day. People in love and acting like fucking idiots. I feel a little lonely, how about you?" Madge doesn't respond. "You look lonely. But I don't know why you sit here like this. You should be out there getting laid."

Madge shuts her book. "Excuse me?" she looks up at him, eyebrows raised in an are-you-kidding-me expression.

"What?" he laughs, which is seriously starting to annoy Madge. "You're beautiful, Undersee. You could get any guy in this school."

Madge doesn't know what to say, but her head starts spinning. Did Gale Hawthorne really just call her _beautiful?_ She hasn't ever heard him say that word; he and his friends use terms of much higher vulgarity when speaking of the attractiveness of females. She swallows thickly, daring to meet his eyes again. He hasn't missed a beat. "You wanna sit with me at lunch, Madge?" his obnoxious smirk turns into a somewhat less obnoxious smile. "None of my other friends will be around. Probably be fucking in the bathroom or something."

She can't help but laugh a little. "Sure," she shrugs, trying hard to remain nonchalant but it's suddenly so hard. Did a boy just ask her to eat with him? She won't have to sit alone reading a book this time? Keep your cool, keep your cool, she coaches herself. "Heard they've got free cupcakes in the cafeteria for the special occasion."

"Awesome," Gale grins, getting up just as the last warning bell rings. "But they're probably not as sweet as you." And with a wink,

_What just happened?_ Madge scolds herself. _Damn you, Hawthorne. I don't even like you._

But things can change; after all, she feels the hatred of Saint Valentine's Holiday starting to burn a little less in her mind.

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_A/N: Unless a lot of people ask, a part two will probably not happen. But I hope you liked it anyway. :) Reviews appreciated! FTFNP will be updated soon!_


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